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Fig. 1. Schematic sketches of the situation in a B3B test of a rectangular plate: a section of the system and b sketch of the top view. 1: specimen, 2: supporting balls, 3: loading ball, 4: die and 5: manifold guide. The dotted circle connects the contact points between supporting balls and specimen and represents the support radius R a . Note that the size of the balls is only a little smaller than the width of the plate. A new biaxial tensile strength test ball on three balls test, B3B-test for brittle materials has been proposed by some of the authors several years ago. A disc-shaped plate is symmetrically supported by three balls at one plane and loaded by a fourth ball in the centre of the opposite plane. This new test has several advantages compared to conventional bending tests or other biaxial strength tests, especially the well defined load transfer geometry and a high tolerance against measurement uncertainties. This makes the testing of as-sintered slightly buckled specimens possible. In the past years the test has proved to be very practicable to test as-sintered disc specimens as well as as-sintered specimens which are shaped like a disc. Although discs areâin principleâeasy to produce, in some cases it is more convenient to produce specimens having the shape of rectangular plates. Also many components have the shape of rectangular plates. Therefore, in this paper, the B3B-test is extended to test specimens which are that shape. An FE analysis of the stress fields in the specimens is performed and the maximum tensile stress amplitude and the effective volume in the specimens are determined. Specimens of different size and of several advanced ceramic materials were tested. It is shown that there exists a size effect on strength which can be explained in the framework of the Weibull theory. The B3B strength data determined on rectangular plate specimens fit to tests results determined on disc specimens and to conventional bending test results. The smallest tested specimen had a volume of some tenth of a cubic millimetre. To demonstrate the practicability of the method a strength distribution of an electroceramic component is determined by testing 494 individual rectangular B3B test specimens.

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For hot rolling wires of high-alloyed steels or superalloys tools are nowadays made of cemented carbides. In service they suffer from roughening of the surfaces and severe wear, which deteriorates the surface quality of the wires and restricts the lifetime of the tool. Due to their high hardness and good high-temperature properties, improvements of tool behaviour can be expected by the use of ceramic. In this paper the suitability of silicon nitride as material for rolls is investigated.The thermal and mechanical loads in silicon nitride rolls during the hot rolling of steel and superalloy wires are analysed. Although the working temperature can be up to 1100 °C the tensile thermal stresses in the rolls reach only a few percent of the materials strength. But mechanical stresses due to contact stresses may become severe. When rolling wires of superalloys tensile contact stresses in the rolls can reach up to 600 MPa – about 60 % of the characteristic bending strength of the silicon nitride material.Experiments in the rolling mill of Boehler in Kapfenberg confirm these theoretical findings. When rolling high-speed tool steels the silicon nitride rolls were superior to the common hard metal rolls. But when rolling superalloys cracks in the rolls arise. For less demanding applications (driving rollers, guiding rollers) silicon nitride rolls are still routinely used by Boehler in Kapfenberg.In summary, silicon nitride ceramics are well suited as tool material for rolling steel wires, if the rolls are properly manufactured and used. For rolling superalloy wires the ceramic material is at its limit, and a safe operation can only be expected for rolls with a material-based design.

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